


in the blue

by westmoor



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (gestures vaguely) jaskier, Blood and Injury, Folklore, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, Major Character Injury, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Norwegian Mythology & Folklore, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Poisoning, Protective Jaskier | Dandelion, Rated For Violence, post-mountain fixit... or is it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28142073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westmoor/pseuds/westmoor
Summary: In hindsight, perhaps he should’ve known.Two decades, as he’d been regularly reminded, for twenty years he’d known him. Watched him find his feet, come into his own talent, grow up.For all that he’d seen or thought he’d seen, how much had he missed?
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 74
Kudos: 407
Collections: Don't Wanna Get Rid Of You





	1. i dreamed a dream

In hindsight, perhaps he should’ve known.

Two decades, as he’d been regularly reminded, for twenty years he’d known him. Watched him find his feet, come into his own talent, _grow up_.

For all that he’d seen or thought he’d seen, how much had he missed?

The paralytic coursing through his veins moors him to the earth and he can’t even turn to look properly, can’t be sure that it’s him. But he is sure. Of course he is sure.

Even his addled mind couldn’t conjure this up.

Through the haze a dozen little instances pull at his attention.

All the little white and yellow wildflowers braided into Roach’s mane at every parting.

The bunched dry heather he’d found in his saddlebags, and dismissed as one of his companion’s whims, quickly forgotten.

Phantom tremors through his wolf medallion on occasions when he’d fall asleep to the sound of hummed and half-formed lyrics.

Clinking and rolling like coins and trinkets from an upended purse.

The poison itself won’t kill him, given time it will run its course. The creature it came from is a different story.

Any moment now he should feel fangs, the pain of tearing flesh, smell his own blood seep into the ground. He doesn’t understand why it’s taking so long.

But the attack doesn’t come. There’d been shouting, but not anymore. Scuffling, but that’s gone too. 

He doesn’t understand why he isn’t alone, either, or how he found him.

Instead there’s a voice, or he thinks it’s a voice, talking or humming or singing and he can’t tell where it’s coming from but it feels like it’s _in_ him, low and rich and rolling like thunder, the silver pressing into his chest burning hot and trembling in time. 

He remembers how it felt like something shifted when the bard finally walked away. As though everything tilted slightly to the left. Or perhaps it had been tilted all along, and suddenly righted. How colours had seemed dulled suddenly, sounds muted.

He remembers asking himself when he had let Jaskier become part of the very air he breathed.

He realises he never asked _how._

From the way he is twisted half on his front, brow pressed to the dirt and blood-mixed mucus seeping from his wound, he can’t see much. It takes a moment to realise the song has stilled.

Another yet to realise he’s alone.

Perhaps his mind had conjured it all up, anyway. Perhaps this is what death is. Perhaps he just never felt it coming.

That wouldn’t be so bad, all things considered.

But the sounds of the forest trickle back through the fog and there’s steps, plodding, something moving behind him. He can’t turn to see it but he counts four, then two. Something soft and warm presses against his forehead and it huffs. He forces his eyes open, unsure of when he’d closed them.

Roach? But it can’t be, he had left her tethered back at the camp, with strict instructions not to follow. 

Hands turn him over and the whole world lurches, before he’s staring up into a face he knows better than any but doesn’t fully recognize - too sharp, he thinks, too pale, and the eyes that search his are too vivid and too bright to be reflections of the nearly nonexistent light, as though illuminated from within.

But it is him. It can’t not be him

“You’re awake,” he hears, and then: “I’m sorry.”

And he frowns, because he is the one who should apologise, but it’s not his voice that speaks. He has listened for that voice in every inn and pub and tavern all across the continent. Has missed that voice every night and by every fire.

He tries to speak, to respond, if only to bind this to reality and to _know_ , but all his throat produces is a garbled groan.

“I know, I know.” Jaskier speaks in a tone meant to soothe. Of what he knows, Geralt isn’t sure. “I should have told you. Should’ve been honest with you from the start, really, but…”

A hand hovers over his face before the bard seems to catch himself, turning instead deftly to the gap in his armour. Only a slight catch of breath escapes him as leather and cloth is folded back.

There’s a pause, and his companion - former companion - settles back on his heels, and the Witcher may be incapacitated but he knows the way the corners of those eyes tighten, reads the doubt on his skin even as it diffuses the faint light of the moon in a way human skin shouldn’t.

“I know I owe you answers,” he says, finally, looking down with eyes that really ought to be darkened in the shadows. “But I don’t expect you’ll want them.” A slip of pink tongue darts across his lip, followed by worrying teeth. “I won’t linger, just… I’ll get a head start, and stay out of your path.”

Geralt tries to protest, to will him to stay, to explain, but to _stay_.

But the darkness is creeping into the edges of his vision, and his voice will not heed him at all. He feels as though he’s sinking into the ground despite his fight, poison and exhaustion dragging him under.

“You’ll be fine. Should be on your feet by morning, I’m sure.” Jaskier smiles, but it’s a wet sort of smile that doesn’t belong on his face. Then he straightens, and makes it to get up. 

The world shifts again as something is pushed under his head, and a blanket - his cloak? - is spread over his torso. The smell of smoke and horses tempers the stabbing needles in his chest. The shadows deepen, crawling closer.

“Look after him for me, won’t you, love?” sounds Jaskier’s voice from above, and it would’ve sounded light if he hadn’t known to hear the strain. Roach nickers as though in response, but Geralt can’t see her anymore.

The last to fade from view is a faint light, cornflower blue.


	2. of sand on the shore

Over the years, Geralt has at times been rather impressed by the bard’s ability to find him.

They rarely make plans, plans are too fickle and too often fall prey to chance or circumstance or a change in the wind. At regular or irregular intervals and as tried and true as the turn of the seasons, they’ll run into each other.

Condition or location seems to matter little, late or early or east or west, busy or idle - and one memorable time rather drunk - Jaskier will turn up in his path, invite himself to his meals and lodgings, loud and vivid and brimming with stories.

It’s not until now though, that he truly appreciates the feat of it and the effort it must’ve required.

He had kept an eye out for his companion before, listening for songs or rumours in every town or establishment he found himself entering. But ever since he vanished in the woods all those months ago, skin alight and eyes too bright and leaving no trail, Geralt has been actively searching.

He wants answers.

But first, he needs to make a long-overdue apology.

-

He has begun straying closer to larger cities, following more commonly travelled routes, last autumn even risking a late arrival to Kaer Morhen detouring through Oxenfurt in the hopes of at least catching fresh word of his former barker. 

Despite all of his best efforts, however, their point of focus remains as elusive and intangible as a ghost. Sifting through snippets of songs that could be Jaskier’s or just reminiscent of his form (and a smattering of near-parodic gossip) leaves him with just a handful of pointers worth following, and even then he finds himself always a day, a week, a month behind. More than once, he gets his hopes dashed by expecting to catch up in the next town, only to find that the bard disappeared along the road and never arrived at all.

Some days, he considers giving up. Some nights, hunched over meager earnings in the northernmost room of an inn that’s as rickety as it’s overpriced, he considers giving up and accepting what he saw that night as a product of blood loss and wishful thinking. 

But in the morning, or at the next crossroads, or by the next fire, he hears Jaskier’s words of regret and the defeat in his voice, and he knows what he needs to do. Secrets or questions or dubious memories be damned, twenty years. For twenty years he had failed to see that which stayed by his side through all that life had thrown their way, be it chaos or havoc or his own stupidity.

Righting that wrong, he decides, is worth the risk of chasing a delusion.

-

He is three days out of Hagge when Roach throws a shoe, forcing them off the road. 

Heavy clouds are blowing in from the west and although he had hoped to put a few more miles behind them, the risk of Roach getting injured picking her way down a slippery road in the dark far outweighs what few hours they would have spared.

The woods provide a welcome shelter both from passing strangers and impending weather.

He settles to camp some ways in, far enough to mellow the rising winds but not so far as to fight through the undergrowth, mindful of his horse. Untacked and packs set aside to deal with later, he bends to run his hands over knees and pasterns, feeling for heat or swelling to indicate a larger problem.

He should’ve seen her. Or heard her, or at the very least not allow himself to be robbed blind like a fool. But he hears nothing but the clinking of glass bottles, and when he turns she runs into the thicket, with quickened breath and quicker feet. 

Geralt doesn’t stop to see which potions she has stolen from the now-opened saddlebag, he doesn’t need to. Each will be irreplaceable until he can scrape together enough coin for ingredients and find a decent alchemist in a reasonably large town. Each will be toxic to a human. Fatal to a child her size. 

He doesn’t even take the time to gather his weapons, but takes her track without a second thought.

Humans can be sneaky when they want to, light-footed little girls the sneakiest of all, and this one skitters like a deer.

She doesn’t leave much of a trail, a detail he notes but that isn’t consequential enough to make him stop and question. She makes sound, though, and he follows through underbrush and bramble, between elders and oaks so grand in stature their branches could hold palaces.

The chase draws him deep into the woods, the ground beneath his boots gone soft with moss and dank debris by the time he realises he has lost her. 

That should be the end of it, he thinks. He tells himself he tried, that he ought to head back to check on Roach and her leg, and at least not to add his horse to the list of those he’s failed recently. His pace grinds nearly to a halt.

And then picks up again.

There is something up ahead, a glimmer among broad trunks, neither shifting nor moving but hanging steady as a lantern in the darkness.

Geralt is a seasoned Witcher, he has weathered many a cold night on the Path, and he won’t be tricked by something so common as a pixie light. 

But it wasn’t hung by fairies, and it’s not the light that lures him in. The sound that beckons him in one that he can’t possibly be hearing - not all the way out here, not after weeks, months, of fruitless searching. 

A second light comes into view, and then another.

The sound that can only exist in his mind grows in force, weaves its notes into the iron-wrought threads of his will and twists them, tugs at the strings that tether to his heart. 

He has to follow.


	3. we see what we seem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He smothers his unease, in case she’d take offense to it. “I will still need those potions back.”  
> ”Will you?” Her fingers, long and delicate, smooth over the fabric. “Surely, I can offer you something better in return?”

He hasn’t realised the extent to which the afternoon light has faded to night until he is standing in a clearing lit by a dozen tiny flames.

They’re hung at various heights and distances, each eliminating the shade cast by another, staving off a darkness nearly viscous in its profundity, like an encroaching mass clinging to the trees and closing them in. So dense it might’ve crawled through and snuffed each light, if not for _her_.

She stands opposite him in the clearing, calm, skirts of a long green dress collected in her hands. A wreath of elderflowers and beech leaves are perched in her golden hair like a crown.

Closer up he might tower over her, he thinks, yet she looks as tall as the trees, her bare feet in the moss as deep as their roots. She says nothing, only waits for him to speak.

“I want no trouble,” he says, unsure whether that’s the proper way to start, or if there is one. “Only to collect what the girl stole.”

She tilts her head to the side, a movement he can’t place, the quirk of her lips is all too familiar.

“We do not steal. Only borrow, or give back.” Her voice is so clear the air seems to stir at it - or maybe the air is so still it stirs at her voice.

He smothers his unease, in case she’d take offense to it. “I will still need those potions back.”

”Will you?” Her fingers, long and delicate, smooth over the fabric. “Surely, I can offer you something better in return?”

\--

Geralt of Rivia is not a lad in his first year on the path, and he won’t be mistaken for one.

Of the things he can draw from his surroundings, he is certain of these: First, that the beautiful woman in green is no more human than he is. Second, that he is well past the boundaries of the world he knows. And third, that he is far, far out of his depth.

At his chest, the wolf medallion hangs listless.

There are species, he knows, that look human or can make themselves human enough to pass at a glance, and whose glamours are so delicate they go undetected.

These last months have been harsh lessons in that.

There’s a faint rustle from where she moves across the forest floor, a gentle sound that brushes against his senses like a caress. She takes her time in pondering her offer, studying him intently with eyes which colour he can’t make out, only that there is too much of it, too bright.

He can’t tell if it’s the lanterns making her seem luminous, or if they are lit by her.

There have been stories of creatures beyond their bestiaries, clever and tricky ones that no Witcher could hunt. Ones that burrow their way into grooves and crevices and make their homes there, steeped in magic so old and so deep they become worlds of their own, whose thresholds can only be found by those who know how to cross them. Those whose power is  gleaned from the pull of roots through the earth and the draw of the moon upon the sea, entwined with the gilding of barley and bursting with each epochal bud in spring. 

He had never believed in such things.

Maybe if he had, he would’ve known.

“I will offer you this,” she says, finally. “The finest gloves your mind could conjure, from a calf who knew no sickness or hunger, for a traveller’s needs are many and dire.”

A game.

There are instances in which Geralt is rather fond of games. Even fancies himself good at games.

He isn’t convinced this will be one of them.

A smile tugs at her lips when he declines.

“Very well.” She continues her pacing, tapping a long index finger against her lips in thought. 

The woods are eerily quiet save for a distant rush of wind, leaving all his senses trained on her in anticipation and noting every detail, every whisper of movement from her leafy crown and something like a tail, lush and red, sweeping under the hem of her skirt at every turn.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“How about this, then? A long road behind you and longer ahead, I’ll give you a steed who is sure of its tread; never shall it go astray and never will it tire.”

Geralt shakes his head, first in rejection, but then to clear it.

The air that felt so thin moments ago has now grown far too thick, accumulating just behind his forehead and weighing it down, a dull thud picking up at the back of his skull. By instinct he feels for his medallion, but to no avail. It’s cold and still against his fingertips. Only the thrumming in his head grows louder. 

He already has a mount, back at the campsite. Doesn’t he?

“I see.” Her smile is kind, but her eyes are sharp. “Then I have one final offer.” 

She holds her palms out towards him, open and inviting. “That which you once set aside, for now you’ve searched both far and wide; You’ll have the object of your heart’s desire.”

Geralt tries to remember Vesemirs lessons, to conjure up his mentor’s voice in his mind as he taught them about foils and tricks, about moves presented as one thing only to turn out to be distractions. 

His mouth is dry. 

He tries to remember tales from his brothers, warnings told by firelight in an abandoned keep. Their faces slip like sand between his fingers, dreams he hadn’t written down.

There is a voice calling his name, but it’s far away, grasping for the threads of his consciousness like curtains billowing in the breeze from an open window.

But he knows that voice.

He remembers a man in a darkened forest, a horse nickering softly behind him, his own blood soaking the ground.

It grows in his chest and fills his lungs like a song, until he can’t hear the beating of his heart for the rise in his ears. 

He sees him next, at the corner of his eye, stepping into the circle of light with determination.

He doesn’t know him.

He’d know him anywhere.

He wears a doublet laced with yellow flowers, and Geralt knows his name.

Jaskier has never looked less human. The memory of the man that night, when remnants of a foreign magic bled into his veins and lit his eyes like stars, is but a candle to the sun, the spill of a kettle to the crashing of the ocean to the shore.

This is a wild thing, a terrible and beautiful thing far too much for a man to grasp, and Geralt can’t turn away. 

Not even when the thing that is Jaskier turns to the woman with the golden hue and speaks in a tongue not meant for his ears. But he knows it still, its tone and cadence and fury familiar but never spoken with such strength, reverberating through the grove and shaking the leaves above.

There is an animal inside him that howls in tune. 

Too-bright eyes turn to find his and they soften and he sees his bard, now, at the heart of that storm is a youth in a tavern, a man at a banquet, a keen wit and reckless spirit, ceaseless and unbridled and foolishly brave. 

“You need to leave,” he says, but Geralt can’t,won’t, not yet, even if he knew how. He has a thousand questions and has never cared less about an answer. 

Whatever he does, he can’t chance another loss, for this one to be final.

He knows his next words should be chosen carefully. That there are a host of things he should say, and a whole other Jaskier needs to hear, to start crossing the desolation that has formed between them.

But there is no time, no space in the moment for what it needs to hold, and what instead leaves his lips is too thin and too shallow to contain any of it.

“Wait,” he says. _Come back to me,_ he doesn’t, but it sounds like a plea nonetheless.

And Jaskier, marvellous Jaskier, who has spent all their years together speaking too much without saying nearly enough, who has read novels in the lines of his brow -

Jaskier looks at him and something passes over his face, something like doubt or perhaps a realisation, and for a fleeting moment Geralt allows himself to hope.

“Go,” he says, brokering no argument. Geralt opens his mouth to protest, but is silenced by the bard pushing closer, grabbing his hand and wrapping it around an object, cold against his skin. “Take this. Leave this place.”

He senses someone - or perhaps the forest itself, a flick of red or a hundred - move around them, but he can’t turn to look. Doesn’t look down to see what has been pressed into his hand, warming slowly to his palm. Can’t dredge the will to turn his attention from Jaskier, this Jaskier, whose eyes are too deep and hollow and yet lit like pools of clear water when the full moon hangs high in the sky. 

“Geralt -” The urgency in the bard’s voice should snap him out of it, but instead he only allows himself to be manipulated, for Jaskier’s nimble fingers to wrap around his wrist and raise his arm between them.

It’s a silver bell. It gleams in the light, transfixing.

Its chime shatters every light in the clearing.

\--

When Geralt opens his eyes, he’s alone, head thick and heavy like in the aftermath of a spell. 

Roach is where he left her, picking at a patch of clovers and past her lie his packs, still open on the ground, surrounded and dirtied by the tracks of an unusually large fox. 

In his left hand is a bundle of white heather.

In his right, a broken silver bell.


	4. the ocean still roars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Jaskier left him on that mountain, something had shifted.
> 
> Geralt had found excuses for it at first. Told himself it was the sound or lack thereof; songs unsung, no lute strings plucked, no stories told or tangents pursued with details growing grander with each telling. That it was just the lingering smell fading over time, the perfumed oils and musk underneath, the trailing scent of herbs or flowers stooped for and picked on their way. Of dandelions in spring and apples in autumn, of wild berries and clovers at the height of summer.
> 
> But Jaskier had left before, too. Taken his voice and his scent and his lute with him, and it was not the same.

When Jaskier left him on that mountain, something had shifted.

Geralt had found excuses for it at first. Told himself it was the sound or lack thereof; songs unsung, no lute strings plucked, no stories told or tangents pursued with details growing grander with each telling. That it was just the lingering smell fading over time, the perfumed oils and musk underneath, the trailing scent of herbs or flowers stooped for and picked on their way. Of dandelions in spring and apples in autumn, of wild berries and clovers at the height of summer.

But Jaskier had left before, too. Taken his voice and his scent and his lute with him, and it was not the same. 

Something in the air had changed, its taste or its weight in his lungs. Colours looked strange to his eyes, like someone had changed their hue and no one else could tell. It was as though the world had tilted slightly on its axis, without proof or reason as to why.

Geralt found meaningful excuses for what he could and pinned his heart as the cause of the rest.

He still does.

But too much has happened since, too many solemn notes making his medallion tremble with the beat of the other’s heart to only blame his own. 

There is a memory of lights in the forest and a woman in green, the taste of blood in his mouth and gentle hands turning his face to the sky, slipping from the grasp of his mind like fevered dreams.

At the bottom of his saddlebag, wrapped in cloth, is a broken silver bell.

* * *

He had hoped that the flicker of emotion that crossed the other man's face had been a sign that perhaps it could be fixed - that he’d be allowed near enough to start to chip away the wedge he had driven between them. That maybe, just maybe, his friend would walk back into his life and he’d be afforded a chance to make things right.

Most of that hope had gone down the storm drains by the time he made it back to Hagge.

Ever since waking up in his half-made camp beyond the forest's edge, head fuzzy and the taste of foreign magic on his tongue, news of his former travelling companion had dwindled. Jaskier hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been anywhere. No note or song, not even a rumour, not for weeks.

It seems that now, for the first time since the day a fresh-faced youth approached him in a tavern in a valley of flowers, the position in his life occupied by Jaskier the bard is truly vacant. 

And still, he can’t give up. 

He doesn’t know what Jaskier is, exactly, nor where, but he knows now there are places to look. In caverns and hollows where they first crawled into legend, glades and groves where their roots have grown deep with power and patience. Nooks and crannies where, with luck and circumstance, one can slip from this world into the one below. 

He also knows that for whatever purpose, if they wish to find him, they will.

There are questions.

He doesn’t give a damn about the answers.

\--

When it comes, it comes in the form of a guardsman with a debt to pay.

Odd things afoot, the man claims. A diseased harvest, unseasonably sour weather. Livestock acting strange and wildlife even stranger. And an overheard conversation in the next town over - word of a band of lawless men having captured the White Wolf’s companion.

If true, Geralt doubts they know what they have captured. In fairness, neither does he, but he knows this: They have his bard.

Geralt takes the bait.

No veiled pretense. No loosened horseshoes or impish little children, no stolen potions or fox tracks in the dirt. 

He rides north toward the town in question, a hamlet nestled at the mouth of a river valley, along a road flanked by firs. The trees near the road are willowy and young, felled in rotation to keep the villages with firewood and kindling. But above, further up the slope of the mountain, they tower tall and dark against the afternoon sky.

His medallion stirs before they even leave the road. 

He brings Roach as far as he deems safe, until the forest grows too dense to pass through with ease. Too far in and she’ll be more a hindrance than a help. He leaves her at the edge of a deertrodden glade, where the canopy opens enough to retain the light for a few more hours. 

It’s a bit of a hike - needles of spruce and dead branches crunching underfoot, nothing to hear but the rustle of wind and birdsong, present but frantic in a way that sets his teeth on edge, as though they too can feel the thrum of foreboding reining him in - but eventually the trunks space out and give way to what seems to once have been a wide trail.

Years must’ve gone by since the last wagon passed this way, overtaken as it is by bushes and undergrowth. Life claws its way out of the grasp of barren darkness, to stretch its shrubs and saplings towards the sun.

There are no tracks but the ones behind him. He didn’t expect there to be.

\--

It had been an outpost once, perched at a height to overlook wide open fields to the east and narrow passes to the north, sheltered from the west by the steep rise of the mountain proper.

Now it’s a derelict ruin, crumbling timber roof cast in shadow by the jagged rock face above. What had been a tidied yard for corralled horses and the loading of carts shrivels by the season as the forest eats its way closer, devouring fertile ground and reaching with many-fingered hands to a weathered tower hunched against the rock from which it once was built.

Standing in front of it, Geralt weighs his options. 

It’s too quiet, too still, as though he stands at the shrine of a god he can’t name. Despite the open air and sinking sun, it feels enclosed. Walled in by trees as tall as city gates - their spiny crowns like battlements - the acrid scent of junipers is even thicker than it ought to be; the sound of the woods too uniform and dull.

On one hand, he has no hint, no proof, no true sign at all that the ramshackle structure hides what he seeks. On the other - 

The hinges have rusted nearly solid, the frame warped by age and moisture, and he has to put the full force of his weight on it to shoulder it open.

His body blocks the light and when his eyes adjust, he is faced with a rough wall and a narrow walkway, moss creeping along the cracks between hewn stone. The air inside is as cold and damp as an earth cellar, except for the sour coniferous tinge prickling like needles at the back of his throat and burning his sinuses. 

He rounds a corner and faces another door - this one slightly agape, tilting at a steep angle from its fastenings. Prying it open and sidling through, he scans another, longer hall, this one winding inwards to the mountain. It slams shut behind him and the world plunges into darkness. 

And then it's blinding.

And then the _scream_.

Guttural and wild like a dying beast. Geralt is knocked back by the force of it, bile rising in his throat.

People never scream like that. In terror or pain, he never heard a human make a sound like that. 

His heart knows the sound when his mind doesn’t.

There is a boy in a tavern and a man on a mountain and a creature in a clearing, and Jaskier was never human. 

It rises and ricochets too loud in too small a space. Notes bend until they break, echoing and doubling back until he fears his skull might split.

Flashes of light and dark beating at his vision like frenzied wings, too quick to catch and too fast to adjust to. His eyes are burning with it and he screws them shut. Ears still ringing and he can’t see, can’t hear. He needs to get out, but he needs to find Jaskier.

Something scrapes against his shoulder like talons or teeth and he spins around, a lunge for his ankle nearly has him off his feet. When the walls prove too close for swords he pulls his hunting knife instead. 

Fighting deaf and blind and hampered by the pounding in his head, there is still a weapon in his hand. He digs his heels in. Roots himself.

He finds his rhythm soon enough. The practiced ease of combat gives respite from his battered senses as he learns the pattern of his adversary. 

There are noises around him, differing like voices, but melding together to a single mass of sound.

A shift in the order and a change of pace, his space is empty and he thinks his opponent has retreated - then a cry like a call of a name, and he adapts without thought. Rushing air and the warmt of a body provides direction; near-hits become deflections. 

With a twist and a turn his blade hits home, sinking into solid flesh and grating against bone.

_If life could give me one blessing -_

Blood wells hot between his fingers and the feel of it, smell of it, is so close and so familiar -

Horror turns his gut.

_\- it would be to take you off my hands._

He can hardly hear himself shouting. Jaskier slumps against him.

\--

Panic consumes the moment and the next, and he is staggering out into the fading light of day. 

Jaskier's knees fold in the grass and Geralt follows him down, grappling at his shoulders, his clothes, anything to keep him righted and assess the damage he has done.

It’s a decent hit. Certain. Deep enough to stay embedded between his ribs. Had it been a contract - 

He knows he’s talking, feels his mouth curl around Jaskier’s name, swearing, curses, promises he can’t keep - and all he can see is red, and tawny brown, and blue.

Jaskier is staring, silenced for once by shock and the fear rolling off him in waves. But when he is stopped from grabbing at the hilt of the knife to pull at it, he grasps for Geralt like a plea. Like he can save him, in spite of it all.

It can’t be real. He should wake in his camp, clouded and drained and relieved.

Pale silk drenches red, slow and steady, like ripples in a pond.

That fire in his eyes, lighting them like moonlight reflecting in a clear tarn, is burning white-hot, burning out. There’s no grounding but the shaking hands fisted in his shirt. He prays for that grip to stay firm.

He doesn’t know how this works, or if it works at all, but there is no choice but to try.

Geralt gathers him up, one arm below his shoulders and the other under his knees, and he runs.

It seems impossibly far. His own tracks through the grass make an even trail to follow. The forest passes in a blur.

At the sight of Roach, he grinds to a halt and lowers Jaskier to the ground as slowly as he can afford, ignoring the whimper in protest when he goes out of reach.

He ignores, too, the uncertain shift of his horse as he rifles through saddlebags without care for their contents, digging blindly under blankets and supplies for what has weighed on his mind for a month. And there, beyond a scrap of cloth wrapped around a warped piece of silver, his fingers find a bundle of twigs.

Rushing back and cradling his bard in his arms with as much gentleness as he can bear, he nearly hesitates, then. Jaskier is already too pale, life ebbing steadily out of him and this - this is a waste of time.

But the hilt of his own blade moves with each laboured breath and he’s not- he can’t- it can’t end like this. He curls his and around the knife, and braces for the strangled scream and struggle that comes.

Presses the handful of now-dried heather against the wound in Jaskier’s chest as he begs for whatever power, whatever luck or chance has followed them this far to take hold. 

The prickly stems soak quickly, white flowers dyed red, then black, in seconds. 

Willing his voice to some semblance of steadiness he taps a pale cheek, trying not to cringe at the cold creeping in.

“Jaskier.” He shakes the arm beneath his back to keep him waking, and is rewarded with a flicker of attention. “I need you to sing for me, lark. Can you do that?”

A grimace, or possibly a smile, sluggish and wan but he tries - the notes sound roughened in his throat, words garbled, more a mumble than a song but he tries.

The silver pendant between them quivers in response to each rising sound and for a moment, he hopes, maybe - but the heart beneath the press of his touch staggers on, rabbit-quick and panicked. Geralt can’t see his own hands for all that red.

There are lessons to this, ones imprinted in him since childhood, the cost of loving what is mortal. Reasons for tempering your heart, for why Witchers do not feel. None of them matter now. 

In their place is a barrage of moments, fleeting glances, the hand at his elbow by instinct when he comes back weary and injured, half-formed melodies by dying fires hummed to no one in particular. The scent of camomile and lavender and ink, ringing laughter, the rustle of silk. The lightness of a pack with provisions just for one, the deafening silence of a thousand lonely mornings, the chill of a bed too narrow for two.

Jaskier’s voice dwindles and fades and he doesn’t know what to _do_ , he does the only thing he can think of. He pulls him so close he fears his bones might break, and he kisses him.

It’s desperate and too forceful and wet with his own tears and Jaskier gasps for air against his lips, and it’s nothing like the stories. 

And nothing happens.

“Please, Jaskier, I can’t -” he chokes out, and it’s all he can muster against the waves that clog and tear at his chest. “I can’t lose you. Not like this. Fuck, I wish I hadn’t let you go.”

There is a deep, ragged breath shaking the body in his arms. His medallion stills on its chain.

And then another breath. 

And when Geralt forces his eyes open the ones that meet his gaze are wet and dull with pain, but awake and alive, blinking up at him with confusion and something like disbelief.

“Geralt?” 

Something breaks in him, then. A wall or a barricade, something old and rigid, shatters like glass and he crumbles with it. 

“I’m here,” he murmurs into Jaskier’s brow, and for now his world is only that: Hair tickling his nose. The smell of blood, still, but less bitter; tempered by earthy musk and summer flowers. Grass under his knees. Jaskier in his arms.

Breath against his neck, calmer, pained but not panicked. Stutters a few times, stops and starts before the words form softly to his collarbones. “Don’t let me go.”

“Never.” It’s barely a whisper, but he doubles down, makes it a promise. “Never.”

And the world tilts slightly on its axis.

**Author's Note:**

> Post-posting note:  
> I'm frankly a little stunned by how many have read this since it completed. And if you've made it all the way down here, I just want to thank you for your time! 
> 
> There is more to this story (I haven't really told you much, after all) and I don't know, but maybe it bears writing some day?


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